Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday October 29, 2010 @12:35PM
from the annual-US-stupidity-bill-much-higher dept.

Ponca City writes "The LA Times reports that the US government has disclosed its annual intel budget for the first time in more than a decade: $80.1 billion on intelligence gathering, representing about 12% of the nation's $664-billion defense budget. The government revealed the total intelligence budget twice before, in 1997 and 1998, in response to a lawsuit. It was $26.6 billion and $26.7 billion, respectively, meaning the budget has tripled in 12 years. 'It is clear that the overall spending on intelligence has blossomed to an unacceptable level in the past decade,' says Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. Dana Priest reported that more than 1,200 government agencies or offices and almost 2,000 outside contractors are involved in counter-terrorism activities, producing about 50,000 intelligence reports each year, far more than the government can effectively digest. The US is running so many secret programs that James R. Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence, said during his confirmation hearings that 'only one entity in the entire universe' knows what they're all doing, and 'that's God.'"

Neither of the things you said has anything to do with statistics, they're simply an opinion based on opinions about a number, and the latter one doesn't even have a sound basis in reality.

For starters, right from the summary: Clapper's statement was made during his confirmation hearing. Do you know what a confirmation hearing is? It means it wasn't his job at the time, making your comment completely inane without even evaluating the sentiment.

When the director doesn't know what he is directing, and the chairperson can't control it, they need to find new jobs. Makes no difference whether Feinstein wants to raise or lower it, she can't do an effective job when she complains about the direction it is going and can't/won't do anything about it.

People in charge who whine about things aren't leading. People in charge who take responsibility and get things done... are.

The committee doesn't have the authority to set the budget. Their job is to audit the security programs and review the budget. They cannot set the budget. So, complaining about the direction it's going is 100% what her job is to do. Your complaint about the director not knowing what's in all 50,000 of those reports BEFORE HE WAS FUCKING CONFIRMED is even more laughable.

The US is running so many secret programs that James R. Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence, said during his confirmation hearings that 'only one entity in the entire universe' knows what they're all doing, and 'that's God.'"

It looks like in 2005, it was $44 billion... so, presumably, between 2005 and the present, it doubled. According to one story, it was at $50 billion in 2007... meaning, from 2007 to present, it gained $30 billion? It seems hard to blame that on Bush and the Republicans, since that's only two years of Bush and no years of Republican SIC chairmanship.

The numbers you are reporting are only the NIP budgets, i.e. 43.5 billion on 2007, 49.8 billion in 2009 and 52.1 billion in 2010. The more than 50 billion in 2007 was just speculation. The >80 billion budget for 2010 fully (supposedly) discloses the total of all of the secret budgets as well.

Since the 2009 budget was approved in 2008, most of the increases happened under Bush. This does not excuse the Democrats for allowing the budget to grow even more, but the process has been entrenched for years

It doesn't take two years. It only takes one bill. I have no doubt that the Bush/Cheney junta pushed through a lot of stuff just before they lost control of the Congress. Remember, they're the party of corporate excess, and enriching Halliburton through its no-bid contracts were still their primary focus for policy decisions.

No need to pin to the two main parties, they are BOTH at fault. BOTH conspire against us and take bribes from any organization willing to offer $5000+ to our congress-critters. So, don't find fault with the bleeding-heart idiots, or the gun-toting xtian hillbillies, they are both fucked in the head, and on the take. No, I'm not a Tea Bagger either, I'm an American Citizen and not happy with the right or left. Get in the middle and do some fucking work, and stop taking money from corporations. Yeah, tha

Generally, I agree. Frankly, I'm pretty conservative... especially fiscally... but I'd have to say I'm a bit more socially moderate than most "conservatives." But honestly... I'd rather have an honest centrist or even socialist-leaning than dishonest Republican/conservative/whatever. Unfortunately, it seems all the honest people get killed before they get to Washington or something.:P

There do seem to be some honest, genuinely nice "politicians." Like... two. Or something like that.

Seems fairly clear, my ass. It's gone up 3 fold since 9/11. This is a true fact. If truth has become partisan then all is lost. Would saying "Since 9/11" be less partisan for your liking? Or is that worse since 9/11 is a registered trademark of Rudy Guiliani? Maybe "lately?" is that non-partisan enough? At any rate, as a committee it's bipartisan, currently with 8 Dems and 7 Repubs. Can't anybody say ANYTHING AT ALL without everybody screaming "A democratic woman, lets not listen!"

I fail to see how I was being partisan or sexist. I said nothing about her being a woman. And I didn't even say I was Republican or wanted to somehow defend the Republicans. Can't I be critical of something or someone in government without being accused of partisanship and sexism?

Yes, what she said is a fact; but I can cherry-pick statistics and prove my point shockingly close to an election that happens to be favoring the other party, too. Facts can be misused, misconstrued, twisted, and distorted, yet

Make way for the terror-industrial complex. I remember after the cold war there was actually serious talk about reducing the military budget from utterly ludicrous to just slightly ludicrous. That is until we found a new boogieman and started the "war on terror". Now that we're fighting an abstract concept instead of an actual definable (and beatable) enemy, our military-industrial complex can continue to grow without limit forever. As an extra added bonus, since this abstract concept requires constant surveillance of small targets (ie, people in small huts scattered all over the world), the vast majority of the money can simply be tossed into a giant hole called "classified operations" and we don't even have to bother with all that tedious itemized budgeting we had to do with the traditional military.

On the other hand, at least with the old military-industrial complex we got some cool hardware that we got to see at air shows and parades. Nowadays all we get is the occasional FBI surveillance device on our cars and constant news stories about entire airports being shut down because someone forgot to put their shampoo in the checked bag instead of the carry-on.

I came to the conclusion some time ago that the United States can not function without a bogeyman. In a country of highly polarized absolutes, it is impossible for most people to conceive of an America that exists as "good" unless something else is held up as an example of "evil."

Take for example the constant paucity of translators familiar with the tongue of countries we're occupying. Where was the nationwide scholarship initiative for Pashto, Farsi and Arabic -- in High school -- in say 9/12/01? It's not like 10 years later our major problem has been trust and the second one has been trust and the third has been blowing up people accidently due to flawed -- um what is that word I'm looking for?I guess the conspiracy buffs have been right all along.

You need to understand that the role of the US military is to defend not just the USA but dozens of other countries. Europe, Japan, S. Korea, S. Arabia and small gulf states, Israel, Australia, more or less entire S. America etc. All those countries depend and can count on US to come in on their side in case of any major conflict. What are the effects of this: a) all those countries have to side with us whenever we need them, politically and economically (think of the gulf oil) b) it prevents bigger conflic

The US isn't fighting an abstract concept. As much as they hate it, the real enemy is Islam. Except they can't admit it and will never do so.

The US has been fighting this since at least the early 1920s in the Phillipines and it really hasn't let up any. There has been a particular focus since 1948 with Israel in that part of the world, but we are seeing a general transformation in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia.

At some point, someone with nuclear weapons on the Islamic side is going to say e

I just hope all the same people who say "throwing more money at education won't fix it" realize the same is true for intelligence. We'll see. I happen to think intelligence *is* the main ingredient to defending against terrorism, since hiding is their only defense, whereas sending massive conventional forces to invade nations was a stupendous blunder. Then again, the Iraq invasion was due to intelligence errors - the cause of which was cultural, not lack of resources.

Let's see, what things might have happened in the last decade which demanded a growth in our intelligence spending?

Man, I can't think of *anything*. I guess that means that total spending approaching $10 Billion is completely unreasonable.

Look, I'm pretty right wing, but even with the two wars and Al Qaeda still trying to run ops against us, there's no excuse for the current state of our intelligence community. Do you realize just how big and bloated it is? Have you seen the Wikipedia page for the U.S. Intelligence Community [wikipedia.org]? Do you see how many different agencies there are? It seems like every single organ of the government has its own intel department, some of them very large. And many of these agencies... for example the military branches and the State Department... are often working against each other. The way Intel has grown has been monstrous and counterproductive. And it's just way too damn big. Intelligence, to be effective, cannot be too big or too expansive. So recognizing that we had so many agencies, what did we do? Cut them down? Eliminate and consolidate some of them? No, we added yet another layer of bureaucracy with the "Director of National Intelligence", the idea being that he'd be a central clearinghouse and authority for all US Intel. But guess what... we had that already. Wasn't the "Director of Central Intelligence" supposed to have that job? I mean the very nature of the, duh, Central Intelligence Agency was to be that central clearinghouse for all US intel. Again, we just added more bureaucracy.

Have a good look at that list. We should probably eliminate or consolidate two-thirds of those organizations. Why in the holy hell do we need a separate national reconnaissance office and national geospatial intel agency outside of CIA? Why does the State Department need an intel org? Just have diplomats write observational reports and forward them to CIA.

Bottom line, just like every other branch of government, intelligence has gotten too huge, expensive, and bloated to effectively do its job.

The scary answer for why there are so many competing intelligence organs? To keep CIA in check. State has been at odds with CIA for decades, with CIA wanting to overthrow governments and to blow stuff up and with State trying to keep the status quo. The most bizarre aspect of CIA isn't that it has its own paramilitary directorate, but that this directorate has been responsible for high-tech advances such as the SR-71 Blackbird (which began life as the CIA-funded A-12) and the Predator drones, and has some o

Just because there are a lot of intelligence agencies, doesn't *necessarily* mean that there are 'too many'. It may be the you are correct, that there are too many, but the only way to know if there are *too many* is to do an analysis of what they each do, and see to what extent they are redundant. It's quite probable that each intelligence agency has a specialization, designed to serve the specific part of the government they belong to (which is probably why there are like 8 intelligence 'agencies' within

Wasn't the reason we got a "Department of Homeland Security" that the intelligence system was disjoint and we needed a single office in charge of coordinating it all?

Bush led us down a lot of primrose paths in the years after 9/11. And, as I predicted then, little of what he did actually improved security, and much of what he did put us into a war that will likely last a century.

If you want to understand what any organization is actually doing (as opposed to understanding what they say they're doing), read their budget. So the fact that the people theoretically in charge of the intelligence agencies don't know how the money is being spent means that they aren't in charge at all.

There are 2 non-mutually-exclusive reasons this could happen:- The people that are supposed to be in charge aren't doing their jobs.- The career spies that work directly for the people in charge are hiding t

This is the inevitable outcome of having the operations side of the intelligence community gutted back in the 1970s by the Church Committee. There are two ways to organize intelligence: boots on the ground or an army of analysts who "use technology to make up for the lack of boots on the ground."

The American people want good, actionable intelligence without all of the sordid shit that the CIA did to get it back then. That's like a fat ass wanting to gorge herself with cake and have a body that rivals Gisele Bundchen or Heidi Klum.

9/11 was proof that the "we can use technology to replace an operations-focused intelligence apparatus" argument is a load of bullshit.

9/11 was proof that the "we can use technology to replace an operations-focused intelligence apparatus" argument is a load of bullshit.

Far from it.

We already had plenty of intel about the plot, it just wasn't correlated very well.More "boots on the ground" would not have brought the plot to light any sooner.

All 9/11 was proof of was that a society based on freedom will occasionally be attacked by people exploiting freedom.We seem to have taken the wrong lesson from that proof and have decided to repress freedom in a scattershot approach to reducing attacks.

where is the tea party and the republicans complaining about uncontrolled government spending?Well I for one am for cutting defense as well as entitlements wherever possible. The problem with defense is that neither you nor I have any clue what number is actually appropriate to meet our defense needs without expert knowledge of international diplomacy, military strategy and a big crystal ball to see what the future threats will be. It is easy for the UK to slash their defense spending when their doctrine s

But of course somehow you do know what our entitlement/social program needs will be without any expert knowledge of societal dynamics, nor a big crystal ball to see what the future social demands will be

No, I just don't care about societal dynamics or the future social demands. I'm not playing Sim City here. It is simply not my right to physically force one person to work for the benefit of another (that is what all involuntary social welfare programs come down to), even if it may be beneficial to

someone who understands why boob jobs for teachers is wrong, but thinks expensive toys for military boobs is right

how did that military and intelligence spending stop 9/11? how many aircraft carriers did it take to stop 19 assholes with boxcutters? how much money were we spending on intelligence when the 9/11 hijackers got their visas approved in the mail a couple of months after 9/11? how many trillions and how many dead america

It shows a massive lack of intelligence across teh board fro US defense budgets.Consider what the world wants [unesco.org] and this was calculated years ago.

Amazing that the US defense Budget is nearing what the whole world had budgeted for defense not so long ago.

The incredible lack of intelligence these current numbers show is of complete failure to realize this amount of money used on removing real world problems and improving the general social environment the people of this world live in, would result in a massivel

"The incredible lack of intelligence these current numbers show is of complete failure to realize this amount of money used on removing real world problems and improving the general social environment the people of this world live in, would result in a massively reduced motive to go to war. and perhaps even eliminate any need for war should all other countries instead spend their defence budgets on such improvements."

Ah, the old "social spending will end war and terrorism" canard. Too bad that reality has s

A: There hasn't been any credible ability to do so by the bad guys
B: Nobody wants to harm the US any more
C: The counterterrorism efforts have prevented such an attack

For ANY of the above choices, how do you know? I mean, REALLY know, not just guessing or trying to shout louder than the guy next to you whose opinion is different than yours?

And for future budgets, how do you decide? Reduce the budget until a major attack happens, then go slightly higher next year? Reduce the budget then just absorb major attacks when they happen? Keep it where it's at on the assumption that the spending levels are the reason there's been nothing big happening? Again, upon what do you base your decision?

In all of Slashdot's membership, there are probably a few who have the real, first-hand primary-source knowledge (or are themselves a primary source) to make these decisions based upon fact and clear, rational thought. The rest of us, myself included, are talking out of our asses because we don't know shit. I loathe and despise Feinstein (she's never met a government-power-increasing law she didn't like), but she's in a position to have at least some factual knowledge. Have we overspent? Probably. But I don't want to be the one to decide how much to cut, and what to keep, and I'm not going to pretend I'm qualified to tell the intel community how to do their jobs. (Intel(tm)? That's another matter...)

We leave it to the judgment of history whether Feinstein is qualified to do so. Myself? I DON'T KNOW.

Well you can still guess a good reason as to why no attack has occurred. One is that extremist organizations are more interested in gaining power in their own country (which the Taliban already accomplished). We showed that attacking us pretty much fucks that up, which is on of the reasons why terrorists in Iraq commit much more domestic attacks than attacks against the occupants there. It's pretty damn easy to get people in this country (as illegal immigration has shown), and you can send 1 man with 1 miss

They have not been any successful terror incidents in the US since 9/11 but there have been several attempts (underpants bomber, Times Square bomber, etc). What stopped those attempts from becoming incidents w

D: 9-11 was partly staged by insiders in the American Government to move their agenda across.

While I am not a conspiracy theorist, that is looking way more likely then any other answer.

We didn't improve our security since then, it's a joke. but we did increase our military spending, got some vice president's company making a shit load of money from jobs, and should I mention that our gas price went up through the roof while the oil companies were posting record breaking profits?

You have to wonder how much of this is spent internally - wiretapping ourselves, invading our own privacy, installing GPS to some poor innocent kid's car for no reason. Unless you count some idle remarks on facebook as legit reasons for anything.

Terrorists are the new commies. And like commies they could be among us, working to bring us down from within! Hurry and report all your friends on facebook before they report you!

So it's $80 billion? Did everyone else fail to notice the other number in TFS? Total defense spending is $664 billion, which leaves $584 billion on non intelligence related defense spending. How much of that $584 billion is spent on military forces meant to defend against a cold war style enemy vs the kind of threats the US faces today? My guess would be a large portion of it. Of the $80 billion on intelligence, how much is appropriate for the kinds of threats the US faces today? My guess would be a s

The intel business has changed. It used to be that the US intelligence community was focused on the capabilities of the USSR, which was a big, slow-moving, closed society. Moving to today's targets is tough. The CIA and NSA had all that expertise focused on what the USSR was doing. They were looking for big stuff like missile launchers that are visible from orbit, and communications between a very centralized bureaucracy in Moscow with outlying subordinate stations. It was reasonably clear how to approach that. All that capability was ill-matched to the many post-USSR threats.

Trying to get intel on a terrorist group is tough. First, the target is tiny. Remember, 9/11 only involved about 25 people, and only a few of them knew the plan more than a day in advance. Second, the groups aren't that connected. Islamic terrorism is an ideology, not an organization. Al-Queda ("The Base") is maybe 200 people at this point, and not doing much. The terrorist incidents in recent years haven't been very connected. Third, intel on terrorist groups has a short useful life.
Where bin Laden was last month is only of historical interest. US intelligence used to be strategic. Now it's mostly tactical. The US used to obsess over Soviet bomber production rates. There's nothing like that to track now.

Then there are the messes in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's an intel problem; insurgents are hard to find but easy to kill. The dumb insurgents are already dead. The remaining ones know how to keep quiet. There's no centralized control of either insurgency. If the insurgents establish a "stronghold", they become vulnerable. That, by the way, is why the war with the Taliban is stalemated. If the Taliban concentrates enough combat power to do anything big, they become vulnerable to modern firepower. If they operate in the background, they can survive, but can't take over, unless they can wear out their opposition. (This frustrates the US military. "Marine doctrine demands a decision." - FMFM-1. Insurgent doctrine does not.
"The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue" - Mao Zedong.)

Coming up next: Mexico. Arguably, northern Mexico is already a "failed state". Drug lords are more vulnerable to intel operations than religiously-motivated insurgents, though. They can't hide too much and still do business, they have to deal and communicate, and the members mistrust each other.

That confusion is why the US now has such a confused intel establishment. That's no excuse for it being as big as it is, though. Or, really, as secretive. Most of the targets today have insignificant capabilities to infiltrate or eavesdrop on the US intel establishment. It's not like going up against Moscow Center, which would devote huge resources and years of time to getting inside some US establishment. The secrecy can get in the way of getting things done.

During WWII, and for decades thereafter, it didn't take a pass to get into the Pentagon. Gen. Marshall decided that any competent intelligence service would figure out a way to get into the building, and so only the really important stuff would be secured. Trying to secure the whole building would be security theater. We need more of that kind of thinking.

"The US is running so many secret programs that James R. Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence, said during his confirmation hearings that 'only one entity in the entire universe' knows what they're all doing, and 'that's God.'""

What a moron, which of all the Gods does he mean?! As he is a defence guy I guess it must be some war God. It wouldn't surprise me if it was Týr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Týr) one of the mightiest God who gave his name to the day Tuesday!

Tripled in the last 12 years? That seems about right, given inflation and all. I know that in the last 12 years my stock portfolio has... hey, wait a minute!!!

Just kidding. Actually I think $80B seems like a small amount of the $600B defense budget. After all, it's probably much cheaper to have good intelligence and make the best use of our troops than to just invade countries at random in hopes of making America safer (not that that would ever happen;). Of course, we have no idea if we're really getting o

You might be onto something there. Maybe the progressive agenda is to destroy cities' economies and cause all businesses to move elsewhere, with high taxes...

No, this is the right wing agenda.

Remember - the right wanted GM go under and take down all of its supporting suppliers and ravage what's left of Detroit, and the right wants to destroy infrastructure by chronic underfunding (ya know, taxes are actually needed for stuff...), and wipe out the blue collar middle class through off-shoring (but don't worry white collar workers are now going away also, so you won't be left out of the fun).

The demonstrable fact is - the U.S. economy in general, and the middle cla

Intelligence is expensive to get. It's not like compiling a list of the best Pizzarias in the US, there's a lot of guesswork and probably bribery and extortion involved. Not to mention the cost of maintaining GITMO for however long it is before the Republicans acknowledge that we have to accept at least a few detainees if we want to be rid of the rest.

I am a pretty left-leaning guy, and I am no huge fan of Gitmo, but there is probably a reason that Gitmo still hasn't been closed. After all, President Obama would have really fired up his base going into these midterm elections if he could check off "closed Gitmo" on his list of to-dos. Therefore, I really, honestly believe that there are some really scary things happening at Gitmo with very few horrible, hardcore killers who have been giving up all sorts of useful intelligence but who cannot be tried in a

Therefore, I really, honestly believe that there are some really scary things happening at Gitmo with very few horrible, hardcore killers who have been giving up all sorts of useful intelligence but who cannot be tried in a civilian court because they have been endlessly tortured to obtain that information. Senator Obama made his campaign promises to close down Gitmo not knowing the secret horrors and President Obama has to backtrack because he now knows about the shit going on.

You know... I can't resist but point out that this would be like saying: Maybe Hitler knew more about the Jewish Community than we do.

And no, I don't feel like that's a Godwin. If there's illegal/immoral/uncool activity going on in Gitmo, it should be shut down. Period. Claiming that maybe he's doing it because the people there did something wrong to his family (figuratively speaking) is just sick. It points out to me (and I hope just not me) how you gloss over human rights violations because you think it benefits national security or some bullshit like that.

Even though we've had a Democrat President since January 20th, 2009 who could end GITMO with the stroke of a pen? (I might remind you also that he campaigned with the promise to do so.)

What exactly do you think the current administration is supposed to do with the people there, ship them to Antarctica? What country is going to take them, after the previous administration hyped up how dangerous the inmates are?

The fact is this MESS was created by Republicans, and is the gift that keeps on giving.

And you think two years is enough time to fix the legion problems created by previous policies? Are you even awake and comprehending anything? Which party filibusters everything unless they get

Unlike the previous president, Obama does not self-grant extra-Constitutional powers to the Executive branch. Bush (or Cheney, really) may have done MANY things "with a stroke of the pen" but Congress has the real power (when it wants to, anyways).

The fact is that many in Congress can not approach Gitmo rationally, because there's a large group of people who *believe* that closing Gitmo means "letting terrorists run through our towns and schools". You can't say you're not aware of the phenomenon. In America

This 80 billion is small compared to how much is spent on Welfare programs like SSI/medicare (1060 billion)

7%.

If we're going to cut cost, eliminating 7% is about as worthless as a "7% off" sale at Walmart. Let's cut the huge expenses, like this pointless war. And slso exclude anyone earning more than 5 million/lifetime from receiving welfare assistance. Those wealthy persons can live off their own resources/personal savings.

According to the Social Security Administration. Of course as wages rises-up, then there will be more and more people with lifetime earnings exceeding 5 million dollars. By 2020 it'll probably be 9% and by 2030, 15%. I think when someone is that wealthy (a millionaire), he or she should not be eligible to receive SS or Medicare checks. They can afford to pay their own bills.

Funny how when someone or their family needs medicare they stop calling it welfare.

80 billion is not a small number, it is pretty huge and every dollar in it means a dollar that isn't going to another need. The biggest problem is that it is all hush-hush so there is little monitoring to control costs or waste and no likelyhood of an impartial public group analyzing it. At least with SSI/Medicare it is on the table and subject to citizen input (a majority of people want it and actually need it). I can't s

Concur. Boobs are cheap, more easily compilable, less guess work and very good for bribery, extortion and not to bad to maintain by comparison. Since intelligence has failed, boobs are the only option....

The difference here is that Apollo was actually worthwhile. We got live science and real products and technologies out of it, for less than (yearly) what American women pay for cosmetics. Don't besmirch Apollo on my watch. Fuck, the Chinese are just NOW trying to get to the moon, what some 40 years late. They're gonna have a huge video blackout when they find our flag is still there.

More on the topic; this is money well spent as it also prevents lion, polar bear, and zombie attacks on US soil. So, they

The difference here is that Apollo was actually worthwhile. We got live science and real products and technologies out of it, for less than (yearly) what American women pay for cosmetics.

I can't wait to see you run for office on the burka as a method of balancing the American budget. Or is the argument pro inflation? I can't tell.

Funny how many comments on this thread take the default position that the issue is spin the bottle: whoever is spending the most, sheds the most, until equilibrium is restored. Balanced budgets by the tried and true method "pick on the fat kid". Are we trying to police government budgets the same way we police traffic? Everyone speeds, but we only pick off the

That's the basic problem. Actually this is problem in a number of government run systems.

It's actually worse than that. If you're producing a thousand reports per week, then any real information is probably hidden under the huge steaming pile of 'intelligence'.

So it ends up just little more than a means of covering your backside because after someone carries out a terrorist attack you can point to the report which should have allowed you to stop if it anyone had read it and been able to decide that it was actually important information and it was important enough to do something about.

We have one. It's called Congress. And at one point it was an entirely novel idea. Now lots of countries have them. Because it works a lot better than what they had before, which was secret police that nobody could check up on.